After months of performing a painfully slow striptease, the 2010 Ford Mustang has finally been officially unveiled. Widely regarded as a mid-cycle update purely intended to maintain the Mustang’s competitive edge over the re-released 2010 Camaro, the changes the 2010 Mustang has undergone are of a significantly subtler variety than originally anticipated. Exterior-wise, the most notable revision is the new pony badge, which went under the knife in honor of its 45th birthday and emerged a stronger, more aggressive steed. According to Ford Mustang Chief Designer Doug Gaffka, the pony badge is the epicenter of the 2010 Mustang’s new style. “Everything we tried to do with this car’s new exterior design is represented in the new pony,” said Gaffka. “It tells the whole story. It’s athletic, aggressive and modern.” Preach it, brother Gaffka.
Hit the jump the check out the official 2010 Mustang image gallery, replete with more photos than you can shake a dipstick at.
Recently Ford unveiled its newest small car, the 2010 Ford Fiesta sedan, at the Guangzhou Auto Show in China. Based on Ford’s Verve Concept car introduced last year as one of the flagship sedan’s in Ford’s new “Global Ford” product line-up, the Ford Fiesta sedan unveiled yesterday will begin production in Beijing in early 2009. Although Ford has yet to confirm or deny whether the new 2010 Fiesta sedan is U.S.-bound, industry experts expect both a three-door and five-door sedan/hatchback combinations to make their way stateside.
Last week, Ford ended an agonizingly long striptease by releasing the 14th and final image of the new 2010 Mustang. Now that Ford has laid all their cards on the table, we no longer suspect the 2010 Mustang will be nearly indistinguishable from the current gen, we’re sure of it. As a matter of fact, we’d be hard pressed to find anything that’s noticeably different, aside from the redesigned pony badge, of course.
Since the Mustang has always found favor in our court, rather than label this Emperor’s-New-Clothes-type reveal as a shameless, disappointing publicity stunt, we choose to interpret the maneuver as Ford’s subtle way of reminding the 2010 Camaro that endless hype and drastic body changes do not a muscle car make.
I know just about every major auto news outlet is reporting that Alfa Romeo has postponed it’s US launch until 2011 because of the depressed financial markets. Well, that’s not entirely true. While the official launch won’t happen until 2011, at the earliest, a few lucky bastards (Jim Glickenhaus is one of them) got their Alfa 8C Competizione ahead of time.
Miller Motorcars in Greenwich, Connecticut was ground zero for last week’s Alfa Romeo’s US mini-launch. Three 8Cs were lined up in their showroom under racing red covers with the glorious Alfa shield emblazoned on it. Mini-launch or no, it drew a crowd, and some bigshots from the home country. Alfa’s Project Manager, Renzo Barbirato and the development test driver, Domenico Martino were there, as was a small crowd of onlookers.
I just got done singing the praises of BMW’s automotive line, especially the 3 Series, and now they’re upping their game even further with a mysterious performance-tuned 3 Series.
You can’t see much from the video, but what you can see tells you at least something. It has carbon fiber bits, a single exhaust (328 model?), lots of plastic moldings, a front air dam smaller than the M3, and it’s a four-door. If you caught anything I didn’t, let me know in the comments.
Apparently impervious to the tumultuous economy, Bentley has unveiled their newest addition to their luxurious line-up, the Bentley Azure T. Officially scheduled to make its inaugural debut at the LA Auto show next week, Bentley apparently decided to drop the curtain a little early. Intended to join the royal Bentley family as the super high performance cousin, the Bentley Azure T features a twin-turbo V8 capable of producing 500-horsepower and 450 pounds-feet of torque. Available in 42 different exterior colors and 25 distinct interior hides, the Azure T comes standard equipped with 20-inch bright-finish alloy wheels and a fully-automated retractable hood. Wisely assuming their target demographic probably has produced several platinum-selling rap albums yet still lives in the same neighborhood he grew up in, Bentley has also ensured that the Azure T is impervious to assault from mischievous kids by equipping it with a fully retractable hood ornament.
Unlike the Dodge Charger’s manufactured for civilian use, Charger’s outfitted with the police package seek to maximize interior capacity and are thus equipped with steering column-mounted gearshifts. Recently, it has been discovered that the column-mount shifts are prone to disengaging from the gearshift cable, resulting in the instrument panel failing to identify which gear is engaged. A fairly serious problem, the recall affects exactly 20,083 Dodge Charger Police vehicles manufactured between 2006-2009. Effective as of November 2008, Dodge will rectify the problem by outfitting the gearshift cable with a locking mechanism to ensure the shift-link display functions properly.
Jalopnik managed to get their hands on the first official production photos of the U.S.-bound 2010 Kia Soul, and I am pleased to note that Kia seems to have spent some time assessing the aesthetic preferences of the average American car buyer and has made design changes accordingly. Unlike the sleek, slightly urban Kia Soul that debuted at the Korean Auto Show back in September, the North American Kia Soul appears to be a little bigger and badder. Hyped as an “urban crossover passenger car,” Kia’s original intention appeared to be to market the Kia Soul as a Scion xB knockoff, but the overwhelming consumer response seemed to indicate that the U.S. market had reached its limit of queer little cars. Shifting their focus slightly, Kia now seems to be capatilzing on the fuel-efficient, off-road quality of the 2010 Soul - and that’s something we’re interested in.
Today, Ford published its third quarter financial reports, revealing a total net loss of $129 million, or 6 cents a share, for the past three months. Gross, Ford North America posted an operating loss of $2.9 billion and as of 12:21pm today, the price of one share of Ford stock was officially listed as $1.91.
As of September 30, 2008, Ford has a reported $18.9 billion in cash reserves, $10.7 billion in committed credit lines (both secured and unsecured), and is steadily losing about $2.6 billion a month. Extending one of their own a courageous vote of confidence, industry analysts at the Detroit Free Press estimate that if Ford continues at its current rate, they’ve only got enough cash to keep afloat for the next seven months. By their approximation, the Blue Oval will walk the Green Mile by April 2009.
Recently, a new Audi mule was caught testing in the industrial district in France. Although we can’t confirm anything as of this moment, the new model appears to be droptop coupe heavily based on the Audi 2500. From what we can see, it also seems as though Audi has entirely eliminated the need for a gas tank, and we’re interested to find out exactly what is powering this fuel-efficient little compact.
